FELTON >> It’s difficult to say who got the more intense workouts at San Lorenzo Valley High track and cross country meets over the past 18 years — the athletes or their coach, Rob Collins.
Come race day, especially early in his tenure, Collins could be seen zig-zagging across the infield or charging over shortcuts through the cross country loop so he could position himself in the perfect place to give his laboring runners key advice or encouragement. Even when his athletes weren’t competing, he seemed to be right by their sides.
“He would never stop. He was all over the place, constantly,” said Alex Dunn, an SLV alum who became the Santa Cruz County record holder in the 1,600 meters in 2004 when he matched the time of 4 minutes, 10.41 seconds set by Aptos’ Jacob Evans earlier that year. “Rob would be hiding everywhere. You knew you can’t slack off because Rob was going to jump out of nowhere and be like, ‘What are you doing? Why aren’t you running? Are you drinking soda?’
“He was super intense and very passionate about it.”
No matter what people thought of his tactics, Collins’ passion for running was unmistakable. And that passion is what will leave the biggest void in the local prep running landscape when Collins steps down at season’s end in June.
“It’s going to be sad to see him go,” said Aptos High distance coach Dan Gruber, who has developed into Collins’ friendly adversary over the years. “In our league, he has contributed probably more than almost anybody else to making us a distance powerhouse. His teams have always been competitive.”
During his tenure, Collins has amassed 11 Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League team championships in cross country and track, 14 Central Coast Section team championships and five state team titles. His runners have garnered 24 CCS individual titles, six state titles, two national titles and one national record (in the distance medley relay in 2000, which stood for about five years).
Collins struck upon success almost from the time he took the Cougars’ coaching reins from Thea Jorgensen in 1999 after a year of working as an assistant. That spring, Alejandra Barrientos ran to a CIF State Track and Field Championships title in the 1,600 meters (4:45:02), a feat she would repeat as a UCLA-bound senior in 2001 (4:43.24) after missing a year with a stress fracture. In the fall of 1999, he led an SLV girls cross country team that had never even won a league title to the state Division III championship, with Barrientos taking the top individual spot.
Collins hasn’t taken his foot off the gas pedal since then. The standout runners he molded amid the trails and trees surrounding the smallest public school in the county included Cody Johnson, the current county record holder in the 800 (1:52:44) who went on to run at Missouri; Johnson’s sister Taylor, a distance standout who ran for Arkansas; Dunn, who ran for Cal Poly San Luis Obispo for two years before becoming an Army Ranger; and most recently, Anna Maxwell, a front-of-the-pack grinder who earned state titles in the 1,600 and D-IV cross country in 2013 and who this season cracked into the University of Washington’s top 10 all-time women’s cross country list.
“As a high school coach, I think I’ve accomplished almost everything,” said Collins, 50.
Unlike many coaches, whose enthusiasm might begin to wane after nearly two decades of giving up their evenings and weekends every fall and spring to watch kids run in circles, Collins is as ardent about running as when he began — even if his body isn’t as cooperative. After a couple of hip-replacement surgeries, a femur replacement surgery and a heart attack on the day of the 2008 CCS championships, he now picks his spots more selectively.
“I’ve changed in a lot of ways,” he said. “I used to be the crazy coach running back and forth along the track. Now I’ve changed because I’ve slowed down a bit.”
With his fervor for the sport still running high, the decision to step away has been hard on Collins. Yet he said he knows it’s what he has to do.
Collins’ wife, Carmen, was diagnosed with breast cancer nine years ago but had been in remission for the past six. Then, days before the SCCAL cross country championships last November, they learned that the cancer had returned in full force, taking up residence in her skull, neck, eye sockets, cheekbones, spine and ribs. She wants to spend what time she has left with their children and grandchildren in Colorado, and he plans to join her.
“I know the decision I’m making, and I’m making the right decision, because I need to support my wife,” he said.
Collins met Carmen while he was serving in the Army as a weapons specialist and border guard based in Aschaffenburg, Germany.
“I fell in love right away,” he said. “When it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.”
They married in 1987 and lived in her hometown of Coburg, two hours outside Aschaffenburg. Collins, a four-time Oregon state qualifier in distance events in high school, had been selected to the all-Army team and would spend two months out of every year living and training at the Presidio in San Francisco. In 1990 he became an active reservist and in 1992 he moved his family to Oregon to take a job as the Sandy High track and cross country coach for a team that consistently finished at the bottom of its league. By the time he left in 1997, he had produced his first multiple-state champion in Pamela Johnson and had turned the Pioneers into perennial league favorites.
Collins landed in Felton in 1998 when he accepted a position operating the since-closed Grocery Outlet. His focus was on making money and a stable life for his family, but he couldn’t stay away from the track. In the fall of 1998, he offered to help Jorgensen coach a couple days a week, which turned into most days of the week. And by the next spring, Jorgensen suggested he take the helm.
“I’ve always felt like I was one of those coaches who, even though I’ve had a cane and a wheelchair a couple of times, I felt like I’d be here for 25 or 20 years,” he said.
He added, noting the sport can be both frustrating and addictive, “In a way, coaching for me is like everyone else’s golf.”
In his nearly 20 years with the Cougars, Collins has created some special memories.
A prankster at heart, he recalled stealthily jumping in to help a group of rival Soquel High athletes toilet-paper his own house, then shocking them when he took off his sweatshirt hood to reveal himself and his signature buzz-cut hair. He also enjoyed the at-times heated rivalry with Gruber and the Mariners, which only pushed athletes from both sides to be better.
“He was more than an able adversary,” Gruber recalled. “I think of him as my Moriarty to me being Sherlock. You need that, and I’m going to miss having that.”
Most of all, though, Collins said he’ll miss connecting with the kids. A product of a broken home, his own high school track coach served as a father figure to Collins, and he tried to build similar relationships with many of his own athletes.
Now, he’ll have to establish new relationships with athletes around Colorado Springs, where he already has some leads on programs that might be able to put his expertise to use a couple days a week.
“His desire to be personal and involved was his way of trying to be very intentional and more than just a ‘Do this,’ and ‘Do that’ kind of coach,” Dunn said.
“This is his passion, and it’s more than about numbers, but also about people.”
Because of that, anyone who knows Collins won’t be too surprised if he pops up at a meet or two next season. When they least expect it, they’ll find him at a turn in the track or a bend in the trail, where he’ll dole out some key advice and encouragement for the runners and program he helped mold into champions.
Contact Julie Jag at 831-706-3257.
